1. This is not a normal love poem. This is me digging a grave
for my self-hatred with the bones of my spine as a shovel
because they always kept me from holding my head up.
2. This is honesty so brutal it leaves me bloody. Never Have I Ever
appreciated these stretch marks for what they were: exit ramps
for the places in my body that kept expanding like the universe
even when God was so claustrophobic he asked it to stop.
3. Years ago at the natural history museum a security guard
placed a postcard into the jaws of a mammoth when no one else
was looking. Even now I still wonder what it said, in the same way
I wonder what the survival codes written in my DNA would tell me
if they knew I sometimes think about trying to crack them.
4. Gravity knows what it’s like to fall down, but my grandmother
once told me she wished there were an opposite force
that would help people stand back up. This is me doing my best
to do just that despite any helping hand.
5. This is not a normal love poem. This is a tribute
to my cellulite, moles, and every eyelash that broke free,
every birthmark shaped like spilled milk. I will not be afraid anymore
to shine the light on every flaw written like invisible ink upon my skin.
6. My home will not be my makeup bag anymore.
I will find refuge in the feeling I used to get when I yanked out
my teeth by hand because it reminded me how painful
life was, but always with bittersweet relief at the end.
7. Oxygen used to make me rust. Now when exposed to air
I inhale instead of trying to hold my breath; I won’t
treat life like a prank anymore.
8. Both my lungs have potholes and both my wrists
have roadblocks, but this is not the usual love poem, so I am trying
to fill them in and clear them out.
9. This is for high-school me, who only went out on dates
with men who carried switchblades in their back pocket
since all of mine were confiscated.
10. This is a love poem for me now, whoever that is. This is a love poem
that is about more than just surviving. This is an instruction manual
for how to put out the cigarette wounds inside me
so I can finally learn to love myself without the burning too.